Philips Avent Smart Baby Monitor

Smart Baby Monitors provide an easy way to keep your baby’s eyes on your phone or tablet, but they also offer some child-friendly features that you can not use with a conventional home surveillance camera, including lullabies and apply a soft night light. With the Philips Avent baby monitor SCD860 you can do all this and monitor your baby’s temperature and humidity. It offers very clear day and night videos and installs in minutes. So, why does not he earn a higher score? From time to time, he loses his Wi-Fi connection during testing, which is the last thing a concerned parent wants.

The Philips Avent Baby Monitor SCD860 offers a slimmer and modern aesthetic. The matte white case has a glossy white face and measures 5.0 inches tall, 1.1 inches wide and 2.6 inches deep. It is perched on a 3.5-inch round base and can be placed on a flat surface or mounted on a wall using the adapter and hardware provided. The box also contains a printed installation guide and an AC adapter with an 8-foot power cable.

At the end of a 5.5 inch cord coming out of the back of the camera is a small ball containing a mini USB power plug, as well as temperature and humidity sensors. The front of the camera is equipped with a microphone, a Wi-Fi indicator, a status LED and a programmable multi-color LED night light. The top of the camera has buttons to turn on the night light and play one of the ten lullabies, as well as a light sensor. At the back of the camera, you’ll find a power button, a reset button, and a speaker grille.

The uGrow mobile app (for Android and iOS) offers a portrait and landscape view and can accommodate up to 10 individual cameras. When you launch it, it opens a live stream with your baby’s name at the top of the screen and a noise level indicator just below it. On the left side of the meter is a small icon to enable and disable notifications. On the right, an icon turns the audio stream on and off.

At the bottom of the screen you will find icons for taking a snapshot, allowing you to talk to your baby, activate and adjust the colors and brightness levels of the night light and activate the function. lullaby. Here you can choose all or part of the 10 available songs, set a timer and adjust the playback volume. In the upper right corner is an icon that allows you to grant view privileges to other users. Up to three users at a time can view the live stream simultaneously.

Dragging from the bottom of the live video screen brings up icons to adjust the sound and humidity thresholds. Touch the Sound icon to increase or decrease the microphone sensitivity and activate notifications that your baby is crying. Tap the Humidity icon to set an acceptable humidity range and enable notifications when the threshold is reached. At the very bottom of the screen is a graph showing the temperature of the last 24 hours; Tap here to set thresholds for temperature notifications.

Related: 10 Best Baby Monitors 2018

Installation and Performance:

Installing the Philips Avent Baby Monitor SCD860 is easy. Start by downloading the uGrow app and create an account. Once the account is verified, you can create a profile with your name and photo, but this is optional. Then select Set up a new baby monitor, fill in the optional baby profile information (name, date of birth, gender, photo) and follow the instructions shown to connect the camera and press the Activate button.

The status light starts blinking amber and turns orange in about 30 seconds. Tap Continue to select a Wi-Fi network and enter your network password. You will be prompted to place your phone or tablet in front of the camera so that it can read the QR code. Once the code is recognized, the camera will beep and the status light will begin to flash green before becoming solid green. It takes about two minutes for the camera to record, how well the setup is complete.

The Philips Avent Baby monitor provided solid performance in most of our tests. The daytime video shows good color quality with no noticeable pincushion distortion, and the black-and-white night video is sharp with good contrast. The lullaby function seems appropriate and the audio quality when using the conversation function is crisp and clear. And the temperature and humidity readings were consistent with the readings from my Honeywell Prestige thermostat.

I received notifications every time the threshold was reached and whenever the monitor lost connectivity, which was more often than I would have liked despite its proximity to my router. On several occasions, the camera was offline for more than 10 minutes, which might as well last 10 hours if you are a worried parent. And that’s my main problem here. Reliability is more important than a whole series of features concerning a baby monitor, and in this respect, the SCD860 is insufficient.

Conclusions:

The Philips Avent Baby Monitor SCD860 offers many features, including a night light, lullaby reading and built-in sensors to monitor your baby’s temperature and humidity. Its 720p camera produces crisp video and offers good audio quality for those times when you want to soothe your baby with the sound of your voice.